The InsideWork 52 is a collection of Scripture verses and quotes to stimulate your thinking at the intersection of faith and work.
The quotes come from a diverse group of thought leaders representing business, economics, theology, history, sociology, technology, and the arts.
Juxtaposed next to the scriptures, the quotes stimulate one’s thinking — sometimes by supporting the text, sometimes by challenging, but always creating the mental tension that leads to better insight and understanding of a biblical worldview.
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One of the unique traits that makes humans unique, different from animals, is our ability to use our skills and talents to shape material things to reflect our individuality - and when we do this, we create property. Material things in and of themselves are not property; they become property only when humans creatively find ways to use them productively. An example is a sticky, black, smelly substance that was nothing but a nuisance until humans developed technology for refining it - then, suddenly, oil became a source for wealth. Seen in this light, the defense of the right to property is not a defense of material things per se, but rather of the dignity of human creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness.
Charles Colson
How Now Shall We Live (p 385), Tyndale Publishers, 1999
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Critics sometimes suggest that competitiveness is foreign to a religion of love, meekness, and peace. They have no idea how hard it is to be meeker than one’s neighbor. There are abuses of competitive spirit, of course, as there are of love, meekness, and peace. But to compete - com + petere, “to seek together although against each other” - is not a vice. It is, in a sense, the form of every virtue and an indispensable element in natural and spiritual growth. Competition is the natural play of the free person. All striving is based upon measurement of oneself by some ideal and under some judgment. When that judgment is ominscient and omnipotent, such measurement is keener than any scalpel. Human sports, lotteries, and contests of every sort - in oratory, song, drama, horsemanship, the arrangement of flowers, the winning of tenure - would make no sense if the competitive spirit were foreign to human nature and learning. Most humans rejoice in it.
Furthermore, it is unlikely that individuals could ever discover their own potential unless they were blessed with good friends and rivals, whose exploits teach them how to push themselves harder than they yet have. To live in a slack age of low standards is a curse upon self-realization. To live among bright, alert, striving rivals is a great gift to one’s own development.
Michael Novak
The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (p. 347), Madison Books, 1991
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Such companies have a personality and what some have called a soul. You can almost smell it, when it is there. I once asked my students to walk into an office or a plant and without speaking to anyone, to make a guess at what kind of environment it would be to work in, and what kind of attitudes and values the management would hold. They were amazed at how accurate their guesses turned out to be when we later visited the same places more formally and conducted surveys of the staff.
Charles Handy
The Hungry Spirit - Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World (p. 71-72), Broadway Books, 1998
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Over the past two decades, the American business and academic community has produced hundreds, perhaps thousands, of management-type business books prodding and showing Americans how they can work smarter, get better results, and compete with those wily Asians … By and large they all urge companies and managers to aspire to greatness by listening to their customers, championing innovation, fostering empowerment and leadership, and ratcheting up quality. Many companies have done very well following the advice contained in these books. Others have faltered. Such inconsistency is a result of two apparent flaws with many of these best-selling tomes. The books, with few exceptions, are mostly geared for managers and mostly preach using techniques on task-driven thinking, not critical thinking.
LeGault, Michael R.
Th!nk: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye (p. 50-51), Threshold Editions, 2006
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John was a successful Christian businessman in his forties. He considered himself a casual drinker and liked to spend time at the bars in the hotels where he stayed. He would say to himself, I will have only one drink tonight, but the truth was that he liked drinking too much to quit after just one. He also liked talking to the people he met in the bar.
John was firmly committed to his wife, but often he would slip into conversation with the women he met in the bars. They were often just as lonely as he was. One scotch and soda after another would lead him through the conversation.
Sometimes he caught himself flirting with these women. When he went back to his room, he was always alone, but he would fantasize about whomever he had just talked with.
The longer he traveled, the more comfortable he became with this routine. One dark night of drinking turned into a darker night of fantasizing…
Stephen Arterburn and Sam Gallucci
Road Warrior: How to Keep Your Faith, Relationships and Integrity When Away from Home (p. 67), Waterbrook Press, 2008
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The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
Attributed to Albert Einstein
The New Quotable Einstein (p. 292), by Alice Calaprice, Princeton University Press, 2005
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We’re going to relentlessly chase perfection knowing full well that we will not catch it, because perfection is unattainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because, in the process, we will catch excellence. I’m not remotely interested in being good.
Vince Lombardi
Legends of Alabama Football (p. 77-78), Sports Publishing, 2004
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I remain convinced that management thinking on the era of talent is sound. Application and execution are quite another matter! Sure, there is much more flexibility in terms and conditions of employment out there: more people are working as freelancers, more people are taking gap years and career breaks, more people are sharing jobs and working flexible hours, hardly anyone goes to work “suited and booted” these days, etc.
I can also see that there is a lot of self-publicity going on, on networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and in the myriad blogs burgeoning on the Web. People seem to love advertising a tailored version of themselves to the world, and they are keen to post their opinions on just about anything for widespread scrutiny and comment.
People have eagerly grasped the personal and lifestyle opportunities of the talent era, but I don’t often see that same enthusiasm for the other side of the coin, the task of staying in shape, in terms of competency and capability, for ever more demanding requirements at work. Too often, under-performance in this respect is blamed on someone else’s failure, be it a poor line manager, the human resources department (heaven forbid), or the company at large. The required degree of personal commitment to stay on top in the talent era is all too often missing.
Richard King
Managing Partner TPC!UK, June 2008, Entering a New era of Talent
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